


strap the wing to me

by a_good_soldier



Series: Going to California (Post-series SPN fics) [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (Referenced) - Freeform, (sort of... really this is just COMPLIMENTS), Episode: s08e17 Goodbye Stranger, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, POV Castiel (Supernatural), Post-Canon, Praise Kink, Romance, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28423773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: Castiel is extremely, irrevocably, annoyingly in love with Dean Winchester.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Going to California (Post-series SPN fics) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048791
Comments: 8
Kudos: 143





	strap the wing to me

**Author's Note:**

> I have been feeling this strange urge to write and a simultaneous inability to do so over the past few days, and THIS NONSENSE is what gets me out of the funk. Terrible. Awful. This is extremely embarrassing. God they're so in love I just want them to be haPPY
> 
> as always, any questions can be directed to [@without-quarter](https://without-quarter.tumblr.com/) over on tumblor. title, naturally, from hozier's _sunlight_ because if you can't quote the master of divine pining in a castiel pov fic then what's the world coming to

If anyone asked Castiel to choose the moment where it all began, he would pick that first step of a fish from water to land. He would say, _Yes, yes, that was the start of it. I loved him then_. But in that strange space before humans first started to name things and lay claims and love each other, time is — was — uncertain. Castiel undoubtedly must have loved him before that first step, if there was a before. He loved him through the stars. He loved him at the birth of the universe and at its end.

So maybe it’s more useful to start closer to home. Cas fell in love with Dean when they first met, when his hand left a burn on Dean Winchester’s shoulder. And Cas fell again when he became human, and again when he was restored to grace, and again when he saw Dean take Jack out to go fishing and when Dean first made him a burger and when Dean showed him his room in the bunker. When Dean had said to Cas, at his absolute lowest, _I’m sorry buddy, but you can’t stay here_ , he’d hated himself for it but he loved him then, too.

If he ever wants to explain it to anyone else he’ll have to pick just one starting point, but the truth of it is that it snuck up on him. It was an accident. And like all accidents, it was stronger than God.

* * *

Dean is beautiful today. It takes Cas by surprise, sometimes. He’s so used to seeing Dean by his soul — unwavering and righteous — that the idea of a mere beam of sunlight making a difference is absurd. And yet: the setting sun lights Dean like a dream, like he is the vast plain through which they are driving, and Cas is breathless.

“The sun looks good on you,” Cas says. He doesn’t avoid saying those things anymore. Dean raised him from the Empty and held him close and said _I need you here, Cas, no matter what_ , and Cas has decided that, for once, he’ll take him at his word.

Dean smiles, a little. If Cas could pick anything to see forever — and he could, he has, he dreamed many times when he was human of what his Heaven would look like — it would be Dean’s smile, pleased. Dean, gently content. And then Dean says, “Thanks, man,” and Cas thinks, _no, it would be his voice_. It would be the unassuming but powerful tenor of it, more soothing than an angelic chorus.

And then Dean’s hands shift on the steering wheel and Cas thinks, _no, it would be his hands_ , the firm slide of them against the leather of the steering wheel, easy and confident.

“What’re you thinking about?” Dean asks, looking over, and Cas realizes he has been staring.

“You,” he replies, easily, because there’s nothing else to say. Dean knows. He must know.

“Right. Uh.” Dean swallows, and taps his thumb against the steering wheel. “That’s— it’s, uh. I’m. I’m flattered, Cas, I am, I just—”

“You don’t like it,” Cas realizes. He’s making Dean uncomfortable. “I apologize.”

“No, don’t—” Dean shakes his head. “I’m saying this wrong.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Cas turns resolutely to the road ahead. He knew what was possible and what was not possible, both when he summoned the Empty and when he returned from it. He’s overstepped his bounds.

Dean sighs. “Gimme a chance here, Cas,” he says, and Cas looks back at him, because surely Dean knows that he has as many chances as he can ask for, with Cas. Which is perhaps the problem, seeing as Dean finds the asking the hardest part.

Cas waits him out. It’s no hardship. They’re probably half an hour away from the bunker by now, just a milk run of a case, no exhaustion or grief urging them forward. Cas has all the time in the world to take in Dean’s shoulders and to think, _would it be cheating if I asked for him in his entirety?_ Surely all of him would be too much for one Heaven.

“I like it,” Dean says hoarsely, “the way you look at me. Talk about me. It just… I’m not used to it, is all.”

That’s all he seems to want to say. Cas asks, “Would you like me to continue?”

Dean blinks over at him. “You mean— like, you got more to say?”

“I could write a novel for you,” Cas says, fully honest, and Dean blows out a breath, surprised. But surely — Cas wonders, isn’t all love like this? Isn’t this the point?

“That’s—” Dean clears his throat. Releases and then grips again the steering wheel. “I’m not just gonna ask you for compliments. That’s weird as hell.”

“I’d like to compliment you,” Cas says, realizing as he says it that it’s true. It’s an extension of what he’d said to summon the Empty. He doesn’t need Dean to reciprocate it — doesn’t want it, even, in the sense that he doesn’t want payment for the truth. He just wants to let it out, for a moment. 

Dean doesn’t say anything in response, and Cas takes it as a go. He starts small, with the last thing he thought of. He says, “I love your shoulders.”

That sparks an incredulous laugh. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Cas watches Dean roll his shoulders back. “I love the shape of them, under your shirts. I love—” and he checks himself, wonders if it’s too much. But Dean said it was all right. And he knows. Surely, he knows. Cas says, softly, “I love how broad they are. They look— comfortable, but strong. Good shoulders to—” and his voice cracks, just from thinking of it, the very idea of it, “to carry a child around, like at a county fair. Good shoulders for a friend to cry on.”

Dean inhales. He doesn’t say anything. Cas is overwhelmed. He’s never said so many words in a row that weren’t a speech in a time of crisis or drunken ramblings. Today, in this car, he is safe, and he is sober. He is in fact intensely aware of himself, aware of the ends of his fingernails and the tips of his hairs, the boundary between himself and the outside world, between himself and Dean.

He’s desperate to cross that boundary. He says, almost in a rush, “I love your mouth. I love when you smile. Your small smile, when you’re pleased but you don’t want to show anyone. When everyone in the bunker asks for seconds after you’ve made dinner, that smile. The smile you had when you gave me that mixtape.” Suddenly, he needs Dean to know. “I love your mouth because it tells me the truth, even when you— when your words can’t do it. I love your mouth because it tells me when you grieve. When you’re happy.”

“Cas— _Jesus_ , Cas,” Dean croaks out. He turns to look at him and Cas sees tears in his eyes, but that mouth — there, unmatched on Earth or in Heaven above, is that smile.

“Your cheekbones devastate me,” Cas says, casually, and Dean turns back to the road, blushing. Quieter, Cas adds, “Your voice pulled me out of Naomi’s programming.”

Dean’s chest rises and falls with the force of his breath. “That so?”

“Yes.” Cas thinks about it for a moment, and then thinks, what harm could it do, after all these years. He says, “She knew you would be the one to free me. She made me kill—” Cas blinks back tears of his own. His hands clench, almost, as if they want to run from him. He would tear apart his body if it could undo the harm he’s caused. “Thousands, I think,” he whispers. “They were you. They were— constructions, or memories, or—”

“Cas, what are you—”

“She made me kill you, over and over, until I was numb to it,” Cas says, his mouth dry, voice rasping over itself. “And then— and then it was you, in that crypt, with the angel tablet, and you were real, and she hadn’t gotten your voice right at all. Your shoulders, she could imitate, and I hadn’t known, I hadn’t known all the ways I catalogued your body even though I had been looking at you for years, so I wouldn’t have known to look for the truth in the shape of your mouth. But your voice—”

In the silence, Cas realizes he is crying. He has never — for angels, things are wholly different. There isn’t really a comparison between torture in the human or demonic sense and the activities that go on in Heaven. But, still. He has never put into words what it meant, to know that he once had a selfhood that was taken away from him, over and over again, ground into nothing by brute force and delicate incisions.

“I’m here,” Dean says, and this, too, this is one of the reasons Cas loves him. Dean puts his hand on Cas’s shoulder, his other hand on the wheel and his eyes still on the road. “Cas— I didn’t know—” Cas watches him exhale, visibly calm himself. Again, he says, “I’m here.”

“I know,” Cas murmurs. He puts his own hand over Dean’s, right hand on right hand like a backwards handshake. The warmth of it is astonishing, is a revelation. Cas pulls his hand down, off his shoulder, cradles it between both of his like a gift, like a small bird. He runs his thumb over the whorls of his fingertips, traces his fingernails. “I love your hands,” he says quietly.

Dean’s hand curls in his, and then relaxes. “Why’s that, Cas?” he asks, voice sounding almost— almost reverent.

“Your hands are strong,” Cas says first, tracing the callouses built up over decades, the bulk of his knuckles. And then, the soft center of his palm. The heart and head lines pulling together. “Your hands take care of your people.”

“I hope so,” Dean says. His thumb runs over Cas’s hand. “That’s— that’s all I want.”

“I know.” Cas risks a kiss to Dean’s fingertip. Dean doesn’t flinch. He presses another kiss to the middle of his index finger. “The way you handle a weapon is unparalleled. Your skill and competence are beautiful, Dean. And so is the way you feed your family. The way you fold laundry.” Cas laughs. “The way you taught me to knead bread.”

“That was a disaster,” Dean chuckles, not loudly enough to break the spell over them. “I’m never letting you in the kitchen again.”

“I should get at least more than one chance.”

“You got flour _inside_ the cabinet above the oven, dude. How does that even happen?”

“Pure talent.” Cas kisses Dean’s palm, closes his eyes at the sound of Dean’s gentle laughter. _He deserves gentle_ , Cas thinks. This man deserves to be soft. “I love your laugh,” Cas admits to the hand in front of him, and then looks up at Dean’s face.

Dean smiles at him. “I like your laugh, too.”

Cas grins. He kisses Dean’s wrist, and then releases him. “I should let you have your hand back.”

“You treat it that nice, you can have it whenever you want,” Dean says. It’s a joke, but there’s an element of truth there. Cas would know it, after all these years, studying Dean’s voice. And, Cas realizes, with no God above and no Devil below, he has a lifetime to learn the rest of him, too.


End file.
